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The Endorsement and Quality Standards Board for Community Development Learning (ESB) was set up in 1997 through a series of community development conferences in England called Towards 2001.

ESB aims to provide a robust system of endorsement of quality for all types of training and learning in Community Development. Our role is to ensure quality standards in training and learning for community development practitioners. ESB contributes to a proficient community development workforce accessing high quality learning through the endorsement of different learning opportunities.

ESB is an independent company ltd by guarantee and has chosen not to seek public funding; it generates income through its endorsement processes and its paid for consultancies with universities and other organisations who wish to develop new community development programmes.

ESB engages with the wider field of community development learning through its involvement in:

The development and updating of the Community Development National Occupation Standards

Creating new qualifications

Contributing to the QAA benchmarks for Youth and Community Work and engaging in consultations

Consulting and working with others to establish the criteria for endorsement

The ETS committee of NYA. ESB is recognised by NYA as an equal endorsement/ validation partner; ESB has a seat on the ETS and together ESB and the ETS undertake joint validations of youth and community programmes

Having a seat on the TAG secretariat and undertakes joint work with TAG.

Working in partnership with other bodies, sometimes running workshops at their conferences

Being involved in international work

Commissioning research into relevant aspects of community development practice and learning

The steering group for the research being conducted By IVAR for the Local Trust

Focus on: London Metropolitan BSc Community Development and Leadership, endorsed: 2012-2017

On 14th February 2017 London Met opened their doors and held a "Love your Family Love London Met" event which allowed students who have registered to bring their children into the University for one day. The scheme was introduced as a result of course leader Patrick Mulrenan’s recent research which looked at student homelessness in London. The study found that students want to be a good role model for their children as one student said: “I just look at my children and I want them to be proud of me.”

In 2016 the Endorsement and Quality Standards Board for Community Development Learning (England) commissioned an initial piece of research about Community Development activity in England and the opportunities that exist for developing and supporting people involved in their community. We are publishing our findings here.

Teh context for the research was that in 2010 a Government resourced consultation involving a range of key actors from the community development field published an important report entitled The Community Development Challenge (Together We Can). The consultation set out to discern and envisage the future of community development in the UK. It was noted that Society relies on community development yet the occupation is not well known. Government tends to invest in it unevenly through several funding streams but has no co-ordinated overview. Yet social policies and programmes repeatedly come back to community development as they grapple with the problems of overcoming disadvantage, engaging with residents and making public services work better.